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Global income and trade trends: Implications for export opportunities for developing countries

The aim of the courses is to give delegates from Permanent Missions an opportunity to become better acquainted with topical issues and developments on the international economic agenda as they are reflected in UNCTAD's work.

The secretariat invites Permanent Missions to nominate delegates who follow matters pertaining to UNCTAD or the World Trade Organization in Geneva to attend these courses.

This short course will examine recent global economic trends and their implications for income growth, trade, economic development and economic policy.

The first session introduces the latest world economic forecasts from international institutions including the World Bank, IMF, OECD and the United Nations, highlighting areas of consensus and divergence and debating their potential implications.

Current forecasts share a broad agreement about the most likely trends for economic growth, with a world economy still struggling to recover five years after the eruption of the global financial crisis. Recommendations about what countries should do, however, are very different. Can these divergent views be reconciled?

The course will then turn to more practical trade and industrial policy concerns, examining the collapse in global trade that occurred in the years since 2008 and its related effects on product and country-specific export performance. It will address the most important implications of the on-going trend whereby developing countries are growing much more rapidly than advanced ones. In particular, the course discusses what this trend means for the export opportunities available to developing countries.